Common Worlds: Paths Toward Sustainable Urbanism

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Common Worlds: Paths Toward Sustainable Urbanism explores expert and lay approaches to sustainable urbanism, focusing on the politics and civic aesthetics of space and place; project-based learning and it consequences for the life chances of youth; and the prospect of intergenerational civic engagement. Extended case studies of sustainable urbanism describe areas undergoing demographic and socioeconomic change over the two decades since the end of the Cold War. The case studies, based upon participatory action research, are framed through the lens of transformational anthropology, which focuses on the structural factors and power relationships that contribute to social and economic disparities within a population. This approach is based upon principles of personal and group transformation, and it holds researchers responsible for collaborating with communities and groups in co-constructing research, thereby enhancing the constituents ability to carry out subsequent transformational change studies rooted in and shaped by the local community. Each case also focuses on a movement in support of aesthetic improvement, including preservation, conservation, and restoration efforts on behalf of parkland, open space, agricultural land, and marine wetlands in the face of external threats to their sustainability.

Reviews

In Common Worlds, Carl Maida has laid the groundwork for a public anthropology centered in the notion of praxis. Over twenty years of fieldwork has produced a book that is ethnographic, philosophical, historical, but also action-oriented. It is a must-read for those interested in the ethnography of Southern California and the impact of the political economy on the lived experience of working people. -- Sam Beck, Cornell University
Carl Maida has crafted a dynamic crossover work that is penetrating, profound and highly readable. Common Worlds contains a powerful historical narrative and a mother lode of theory anthropological, environmental and geographical. He has worked among the public/private partnerships and the community coalitions as a critical participant observer and now tells their stories in a crisp comparative framework. This is a compelling book that takes us through hidden histories and unforeseen waters traversing art, economics, and everyday life; providing viable answers as to how we can confront the environmental tragedies of our time; and offering a discourse of hope that will help guide us to take back the land, and the country. -- Brian McKenna, University of Michigan, Dearborn

Author Bio

Carl A. Maida is a professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability in the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.